My life with the idiot box

We’ll call this the “ABC post”. Due to a weird series of events, I managed to be away from the house most of last night and still saw a lot of new television.
Veritas, the Quest is going to die a lingering Birds of Prey death. A decent, fun idea for the main plot, and a couple of very good character actors in supporting roles, but the idea to take a not-particularly-charismatic teen and make him central to a world-spanning plot designed to cast him as a sex symbol was a mistake. This is not Tomb Raider, but it desperately wants to be. Also, I don’t know where the budget for the show went, but they definitely saved money on set lighting.
Miracles looks very promising. Reasonable creepy, some very good cinematography and very believable stunts, and of course Angus MacFadyen, whom you might remember from Braveheart (although he won a spot in my cult-favorite fanboy heart for playing Komodo in Warriors of Virtue). He plays a good almost-crazy (witness his role in Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood — the only part of the movie I entirely enjoyed). All this and Skeet Ulrich too. And the rest of the regular cast isn’t bad, from what we’ve seen of them.
Finally, kudos to Alias for having the balls to completely change the entire dynamic of the show in one episode. Huge. Just when you were starting to think “oh man, the bad guys have got to start noticing some of this stuff”, you find out you were oh so very right, and yet you still had no idea what was going on. Few characters on television shows are written well enough to make me feel slow-on-the-uptake, but Alias has two of them. Maybe three.

3 Replies to “My life with the idiot box”

  1. I caught most of Veritas, then switched to PBS for a nice American Experience program on the Pacific Railroad project/debacle/triumph.
    I didn’t mind the teen that much, and most of the actors didn’t annoy me (Arnold Vosloo, the Billy Zane clone, I’ve seen him before, does solid work)… but the whole thing felt like one of those forgettable Saturday afternoon shows making the rounds lately (Adventure Inc, Beastmaster, etc, etc) mated to the Highlander TV show (for that nice Euro flair). I don’t think it’s going to die a lingering death. It’s going to be euthanized within a month.
    And probably rightly so.

  2. Yay! You saw Alias!
    Definitely a don’t-miss-this episode, but also not the first episode to watch of the show ever, as my boss tried to follow what was going on.

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